REAPING INNOCENCE ◦ STILINSKI [3]

xx.

    "That's exactly what I'm saying." Jordan said quietly and grimly. He shut the book he was holding and dropped it on the coffee table with a disturbingly conclusive sound.

    The Sheriff glanced at his watch. "I'd better get moving; the service starts at ten o'clock. I presume you'll be there?" He paused on his way to the door and looked back, his manner irresolute. "Parrish, I hope you can handle this."

    "I can take care of it, Sheriff. I told you; leave it to me. Would you rather have Beacon Hills in all the papers, not just as the scene of a tragedy but also as the town where a body was literally stolen from the morgue? A gathering place for werewolves? The town where the undead walk? Is that the kind of publicity you want?"

    Sheriff Stilinski hesitated, chewing his lip, then nodded, still looking unhappy. "All right, Parrish. But make it quick and quiet. We do not want this getting out to the public—especially about Carter's body being missing. I'll see you at the church."

    Jordan stood there for some time after the Sheriff left, apparently staring into space. At last he nodded once and went out the front door himself.

    Carter slowly trailed back up the stairs. Now what had all that been about? She felt confused, as if she were floating loose in time and space. She needed to know what day it was, why she was here, and why she felt so frightened. Why she felt so intensely that no one must see her or hear her or notice her at all.

    Looking around the attic, she saw nothing that would give her any help. Where she had been lying there were only the mattress and the oil-cloth and a little green book. She reached out, flipping open the front cover. On the pages were a male's handwriting; someone had written about her life and left it here for when she woke up—whoever brought her here wanted her to remember. It was as if they knew that when she awoke she wouldn't remember anything about her life; her friends; or who she even was...

    When she finished reading, she was weak with fear and horror. Bright spots danced and shimmered before her eyes. There was so much pain in these pages. So many secrets, so much need, so much hatred, so much agony. It was the story of a girl who'd felt lost in her own hometown, who'd lost faith in her own family. Who'd been looking for...something, something she could never quite reach. But that wasn't what caused this throbbing panic in her chest that drained all the energy from her body. That wasn't why she felt as if she were falling even when she sat as still as she could get.

    What caused the panic was that she remembered.

    She remembered everything now.

    The bridge, the rushing water. The terror as the air left her lungs and there was nothing but inky liquid to breathe. The way it had burned her chest—constricted throat and the way her head pounded at the lack of oxygen. The way her animalistic instincts tried to force her to fight against the water. And the final instant when it had stopped hurting, when her heart stopped pumping, when everything had stopped. When everything...stopped.

    Oh, Scott—Stiles, I was so frightened, she thought. And the same fear was inside her now. A mere hour ago, how could she have forgotten them, everything they meant to her? What had made her act that way? Why hadn't she remembered them until she read about them in that journal?

    But she knew. At the center of her consciousness, she knew. Nobody got up and walked away from a crash like that. Nobody busted out of a submerged car. Nobody survived a drowning like that. Nobody got up and walked away alive. Slowly, she rose and went to look at the shuttered window. The darkened pane of glass acted as a mirror, throwing her reflection back at her.

    It was not the reflection she'd seen in her dream, where she had run down a hall of mirrors that seemed to have a life of their own. There was nothing sly or cruel about this face. Just the same, it was subtly different from what she was used to seeing. There was a pale glow to her skin and a telling hollowness about the eyes. Her face was paler than before but eerily beautiful, like fine porcelain lit from within. Her eyes were smudged with shadows, but there was a resolve in them. Carter touched fingertips to her neck, on either side. This was where Deucalion and Scott had sunk their fangs into her neck, but there were no remnants of the pain she used to feel whenever she touched the invisible wounds with a certain amount of pressure.